Meme Monday – How to Present a Fail

The Internet picked up where shows like America’s Funniest Home Videos left off, in the wide world of recorded fails. It’s always amazing to me that a) someone caught the fail on video in the first place, and b) that they then shared it widely with the world. But they did and they do, and we can watch and enjoy from there.

Thanks to the Fine Brothers, there are two types of fail video memes that I’ve seen lately, and which I thoroughly enjoy. They end up a little different from each other, but also pretty similar, so let’s give them both a look.

Shooting Stars

These tend to be fails although I suppose they don’t have to be. Basically, an awkward pose or movement is captured from a video, turned into a repeating .gif, and sent hurtling across all of time and space. Often into what looks like the quantum space from like Ant-Man or Doctor Strange, as well.

And always with that same song (which I believe is called “Shooting Stars” so there you go).

The way that this meme tends to be framed is you get to see the start of a video, see the move that becomes the shooting star – you odyssey across creation – and then you return to the original video to generally find out that it was a fail video, and someone gets hurt or something funny happened.

Because it’s the same music, and often the same backdrops, I don’t find this one to be a super re-watchable sort of meme. It’s amusing, it has a good setup, but once you’ve seen a few you’re set.

If you’d like a recommendation, I really like this one.

To Be Continued

It’s To Be Continued memes for the first half of this video.

Again, these tend to be fails, but even moreso don’t have to be – in particular, the compilation that they watched in this video wasn’t as many fails. Basically, this meme shows the start of a video, up to either a funny moment or, more commonly, something just starting to go horribly wrong – and it freeze frames and cuts to the “To Be Continued.”

And always with the same song (and graphic). Though to be fair, it’s for a much shorter time than for the Shooting Stars meme. The song is longer than is normally used, so sometimes with longer videos I’ve seen them start to play the earlier bit of the song, as you build up anticipation to the moment when it freeze-frames.

Although I’ve seen a couple where they do, almost none of these videos show you what happens next. And I actually find this some of the charm of these videos – they leave it to your imagination to fill in the rest. The React channel has been showing some challenges lately where you try not to move, because you want to flinch or look away. Some of these To Be Continued videos might be of the same sort, except that the potentially worst part happens after the freeze-frame.

I’m okay with not seeing the limbs break, or the final hit as someone crashes, or whatever awful thing happens – however, the leadup to things going wrong? Turns out, I enjoy watching that. And maybe you will as well. I’ve found this meme to be much more watchable, and may have binged quite a few compilations of these videos…

Which meme do you prefer? Is there another fail video meme that you like? Let us know in the comments below!

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“Being a geek is all about being honest about what you enjoy and not being afraid to demonstrate that affection. It means never having to play it cool about how much you like something. It’s basically a license to proudly emote on a somewhat childish level rather than behave like a supposed adult. Being a geek is extremely liberating.”
― Simon Pegg